


God of the Swift Amber River

by VeloxVoid



Category: Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi | Spirited Away, Spirited Away, Studio Ghibli - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Dragons, Gen, Gods, Hurt/Comfort, Mystery, Origin Story, Prequel, Prequel - Spirited Away, Psychological Horror, Soul-Searching, Spirit World
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:54:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24813403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeloxVoid/pseuds/VeloxVoid
Summary: A Spirited Away prequel.Who is Haku? Who was he before meeting Chihiro? Follow his journey as he comes to exist in the Spirit World, and how he fares as Yubaba’s apprentice.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12





	God of the Swift Amber River

**Author's Note:**

> I'm truly not expecting anybody to read this, lol. It's so purely self-indulgent - I kinda have no idea why I wrote it. I love it though.

A disturbance has been coming for some time.

The spirit senses it within his waters, each ripple upon its lustrous azure surface seeming to waver with fright. His river calls out to him, uncertain - feeble little cries that plead for safety, and for assurance: things that _Nigihayami Kohakunushi_ cannot promise. He, _Kohaku_ , is merely the spirit of the water - its spectral embodiment - and he is as uncertain of the disturbance he senses as the river is.

The sealife population within it has dwindled over the years. The waters, once clear and crisp and glimmering beneath crystalline skies, have grown murkier. The riverbed, once paved by slimy rocks and pink sands, is now tainted by the waste of humanity - by scum and rot and items long-forgotten.

Kohaku has grown angry. His sanctum has been blighted. He is powerless to stop it, but his duty is to _protect_. Each day, more refuse washes through his river. Each day, fish float to its top, poisoned by the toxins that bane his home. This must be the build-up, he thinks; this must be what his river can sense, and what has been creeping up on him for so long to make his existence one of irritation and unease.

Until, one day, the disturbance comes.

It makes emotion swell within the spirit just as the river swells over its banks in the wet seasons. It is as though a thousand rains have come at once, to flood him, and make fright and fury and silent screams of anguish spill out of him in a surge of pure, unbridled rage.

Monstrous sounds of construction pierce the air around his home, and Kohaku can do nought but watch as the humans arrive with their great, towering vehicles, hellbent on nothing but destruction. The weapons on the tips of their long, craning necks dig up the soft earth around the riverbanks. More begin to dig at his river, and Kohaku feels pain for the first time - sharp, stabbing sensations penetrating his presence. They make a ghastly, fearsome mess of his perfect sanctum; they raze it without remorse, with bored expressions upon their dreary faces and silent, insidious vehicles that mindlessly obey their every command.

Kohaku fights back - he snarls and lashes, but he knows deep within himself that it is a fruitless effort. The power he has in the human world is weak - barely enough to stir a current, let alone put a stop to this treachery. Still, he tries. He tries desperately to keep his river whole, and complete, for its waves are screeching out in their terror and uncertainty now, but he cannot. He combats the humans until his energy is dwindled, but they cannot even feel it.

Slowly, but surely, the sludge they call _concrete_ fills the river. It cements to the rotten riverbed and hardens, and pushes Kohaku’s waters aside. They are displaced, pushing up onto their banks, overflowing as his emotion did throughout him, and wash away until nothing remains.

Each second pains Kohaku; his presence becomes nothing but a deep, dull ache, pulsating like a heavy human heartbeat. The spirit’s senses wane, and he watches from afar as his once-azure river becomes a sea of solid grey.

He knows no more.

* * *

Kohaku’s eyes drifted steadily open, assaulted at once by a bright, piercing light. This light was not natural - not the searing sun beating down on his waters through a cloudless sky, nor a pale moon illuminating the black of the night in a ghostly glow. This light was artificial. It was amber - a muted orange mottled with wan yellows as a poor imitation of the sun. It put the sun to shame.

It scarcely lit the room; while overhead, it seemed bright and painful, when Kohaku looked to the corners of this small, square space, he was met with inky shadows creeping up the rich red walls, and across the crimson carpet laced with golden stitching.

Blinking, he took in the room around him. He sat upon a slim bench, with pillowy softness embracing his back and his haunches from cushions around him. It was a comfort he had never experienced before, and the countless guests that shared this room seemed to be in agreement of the undeniable repose it brought him. Strange figures sat slouched next to him, and on the identical bench across from him, seemingly at rest from their relaxed postures.

Each looked different. Some wore wooden masks in the likenesses of animals and gods alike, while others bore contorted faces of animals or creatures. Their journeys must have been long - arduous, perhaps - for they all sat nestled into the cushions, either with their visible eyes closed, or with their masked heads slumped into their shoulders in slumber.

Or, maybe that was simply because it was night. As the spirit’s eyes drifted to a window at his side, he saw the familiar blue-black of a twilight sky, with the dim amber haze of light pollution touching the horizon.

Only then did it occur to him that he didn’t know where he was. This room was a mystery to him - the sky outside unfamiliar. Even so, he was not fazed; he was not motivated to move, or run for the door opposite the window to wrench it open and be free. No - the spirit felt calm, and right: as though this were his duty, just as it had been all that time ago to protect.

_Protect…_

Protect what?

As he looked down into his lap, he was startled to see the form he had taken on. Human. He wore plain clothes - loose fitting pants and shirt, both undyed cotton - but he could see his own slim, smooth hands and feet that were exposed beneath, the soft colour of the sands that had lined his riverbed.

_His riverbed._

That memory was fleeting - tiny sand granules scintillating beneath sunlit waters - and was gone.

What was that? Where had he come from? The spirit looked down - now a boy - at his human hands, and wondered.

Then, however, a soft rocking sensation shook the room. A movement around him that he had not been aware of ceased, and each other person - or perhaps spirit - in the room roused. Some leaned down to grasp bags from beneath their bench, while others stood and shook out their clothes - each wore garments of impressive materials, some patterned with golden threads to match the ornate rug beneath their sandalled feet.

They were all united in one way, however. They all moved slowly. They were in no rush, and not a single one of them seemed as confused as the boy spirit felt deep inside, beneath his calm and accepting exterior. The wooden door creaked open, and the passengers proceeded single-file to the outside world, not even so much as looking around themselves. The boy spirit stood, feeling shaky on his spindly human legs, and took up the rear.

Upon leaving the room, he became aware of an uncomfortable heat pressing in around him. It was as though the atmosphere outside was thick, and balmy, willing beads of sweat to rise upon the skin beneath his clothes. The heat did not matter, though, as he took a look around himself.

All of that time, he had been on a boat - one that had just moored. It sat atop a vast expanse of water that may as well have been ink, reflecting the jet-black darkness of the sky despite the gold dancing upon its surface from the boat’s shimmering lights. He wore _geta_ \- wooden sandals that served to keep his pants from dragging across the floor - and they made soft _clack_ ing sounds upon the wooden panelling beneath his feet, joining the hundreds of others from his fellow passengers.

Their footsteps rang into the otherwise quiet night as they leisurely left the boat, _clack_ ing across a weathered-looking wooden plank and onto a set of stout stone steps. The boy spirit was last, and he took only two short footsteps on the stable cobblestone beneath him before he heard scraping, and turned to see the plank being pulled back onto the boat by some formless power. The glowing lights of the boat flickered into blackness, and it was gone. Disappeared - melted into nothingness. Behind it, in the distance, were countless lights of the same dull yellow, mingling with bright reds and oranges, all of which were overshadowed by a looming clock tower. Its body was black, and steadfast against the sky, but its two faces were like beacons against the hazy blackness.

Those buildings were all across the water, though, and the boat was gone. The boy spirit could not go back to where he had come from, even if he knew where that place was.

He didn’t, though. He knew not where he had come from, nor where this place was. And as he stood, almost forlorn, upon the short stone steps, he realised that he did not know why he was here. It seemed to be his duty, but not one of his own making. It was as though he had been assigned a mission, and he needed to carry it out.

He would need to find out what that was, though.

The boat’s other passengers had moved on without him, past a frog-shaped fountain drooling a lazy stream of water and up into what looked to be a street lined by dingy storefronts, lit by more of those same amber lights.

He supposed he had no other choice. He followed the others at a distance, into the world he didn’t know.


End file.
